Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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At the AEIdeas blog, Tom Miller finds researchers are reaching conclusions about RomneyCare that their data do not necessarily support, and are claiming ObamaCare will perform similarly, despite major differences between Massachusetts and the nation as a whole.

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter (R), who added Idaho to the multi-state challenge that sought to overturn ObamaCare as unconstitutional, now supports helping the Obama administration implement the law by establishing and funding a health insurance “exchange.” Exchanges are new government bureaucracies that enforce ObamaCare’s many regulations, channel billions in deficit-financed government subsidies to private health insurance companies, and help the IRS penalize individuals and employers who fail to purchase government-approved insurance. So far, some 32 states have refused to establish an Exchange themselves. If Idaho’s legislature authorizes an Exchange, they will make Idaho the only state where a Republican legislature and governor acted together to implement this essential piece of ObamaCare.

One could argue this is a debate Idaho shouldn’t even be having. Establishing an ObamaCare compliant Exchange would violate Idaho state law.

In a letter sent to Idaho legislators today, Goldwater Institute attorney Christina Sandefur explains, “establishing a PPACA state health insurance exchange in Idaho would conflict with the state’s Health Care Freedom Act.” Idaho’s Health Care Freedom Act protects the “right of all persons residing in the state of Idaho in choosing the mode of securing heatlh care services free from the imposition of penalties” including “any civil or criminal fine, tax, salary or wage withholding, surcharge, fee or any other imposed consequence.” Sandefur explains (as I have explained elsewhere), “State exchanges that conform to PPACA are inconsistent with this safeguard because they are the key vehicles for implementing the individual mandate tax,” as well as the penalties ObamaCare levies on employers under the employer mandate. Idaho’s Health Care Freedom Act forbids state officials or state-created non-profits from doing anything that helps to enforce such penalties: “No public official, employee, or agent of the state of Idaho or any of its political subdivisions, shall act to impose, collect, enforce, or effectuate any penalty in the state of Idaho that violates the public policy set forth in [this Act].” As a result, Sandefur writes, “Idaho public officials who operate exchanges would be violating state law,” and “the Attorney General is charged with taking legal action against those who do so.”

Otter himself signed the Health Care Freedom Act into law in 2010, and was the first governor in the nation to do so. The purpose of that Act was to prevent state officials from doing what Otter is now trying to do. “What the Idaho Health Freedom Act says,” Otter boasted at the time, “is that the citizens of our state won’t be subject to another federal mandate or turn over another part of their life to government control.” Yet he is now trying to subject Idaho residents to those mandates, and violating his own law to help the federal government implement ObamaCare. The best spin I can put on this is that Otter is getting some very, very bad advice about the Health Care Freedom Act and ObamaCare’s Exchanges.

The situation in Idaho is a replay of Arizona, which enshrined a similar Health Care Freedom Act in its Constitution. As Arizona officials were wrestling with whether to establish an Exchange, Sandefur and her Goldwater Institute colleagues threatened legal action if Arizona did so. That threat was likely a major factor in Gov. Jan Brewer’s (R) decision to oppose an Exchange.

My coauthor Jonathan Adler and I have been educating state lawmakers about how ObamaCare allows them to block the law’s employer mandate, and to exempt collectively 15 million taxpayers from its individual mandate. So far, 32 states have exercised those powers, exempting all of their employers and 10 million residents from those punitive taxes. In Mother Jones, MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber calls our interpretation of the law “screwy…nutty…stupid.” (This issue is currently being litigated in Oklahoma.)

In this Cato video, I challenge Prof. Gruber (and any other supporter of the law) to a debate on the powers Congress grants states under ObamaCare.

Health insurance premiums may as much as double for some small businesses and individual buyers in the U.S. when the Affordable Care Act’s major provisions start in 2014, Aetna Inc. (AET)’s chief executive officer said.

While subsidies in the law will shield some people, other consumers who make too much for assistance are in for “premium rate shock,” Mark Bertolini, who runs the third-biggest U.S. health-insurance company, told analysts yesterday at a conference in New York. The prospect has spurred discussion of having Congress delay or phase in parts of the law, he said.

“We’ve shared it all with the people in Washington and I think it’s a big concern,” the CEO said. “We’re going to see some markets go up as much as as 100 percent.”…

Premiums are likely to increase 25 percent to 50 percent on average in the small-group and individual markets, he said, citing projections by his Hartford, Connecticut-based company.

I can also tell you that, so far, I have detected no serious effort on the part of Democrats to delay anything. Frankly, I think hard core supporters of the new health law and the administration are in denial about what is coming.

I expect more health insurers to be echoing the Aetna comments in coming weeks.

Tennessee faces a decision this week about health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act.

I’m not a fan of the law. The more I know, the more harmful I think it will be for small businesses and costly for state governments and the federal government. It does nothing to address the cost of health care in our country. It only expands a broken system…

Since the presidential election, we’ve received 800-plus pages of draft rules from the federal government, some of which actually limit state decisions about running an exchange more than we expected.

The Obama administration has set an aggressive timeline to implement exchanges, while there is still a lot of uncertainty about how the process will actually work. What has concerned me more and more is that they seem to be making this up as they go.

In weighing all of the information we currently have, I informed the federal government today that Tennessee will not run a state-based exchange. If conditions warrant in the future and it makes sense at a later date for Tennessee to run the exchange, we would consider that as an option at the appropriate time.

On the same day he met with President Barack Obama (D) at the White House, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) vetoed a bill that would have implemented a key part of ObamaCare:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) became the latest state chief executive to rebuff President Barack Obama’s health care reform law Thursday by vetoing a bill that would have created an online marketplace for uninsured residents to shop for health insurance.